DON’T become an “essential worker” or a worker in an “essential field/job.”

How did we end up in a place where if you want to make more money and enjoy less exposure to disease, the correct strategy is not to become essential?

Not all essential workers are low-pay. I’m thinking of doctors and nurses particularly, though they are still forced (by choice as well) to work under battlefield conditions, but they work shoulder-to-shoulder with low-paid workers who clean everything from floors to beds, do laundry, and perform lots of other duties on very low pay.

Would a just society pay people according to how essential they are? Or are we doing that already but simply not admitting it?